Simon Doonan: ‘Nobody in Fashion Wants to Co-Brand With Snooki’

Fashion labels look at some people and see dollar signs. Katie Holmes in their boyfriend jeans: ka-ching. Blake Lively in their corset top: money you can taste. A Jolie-Pitt child in their seersucker training panties: close down the bank, because all that money is not going to fit in one account. The cast of Jersey Shore actually carries similar weight, just in the opposite kind of way.

Barneys’ Simon Doonan says that high-end brands have taken to sending Snooki their competitors’ bags in an effort to launch a stealth smear campaign against them.

As much as one might adore Miss Snickerdoodle, her ability to inspire dress-alikes among her fans is questionable. The bottom line? Nobody in fashion wants to co-brand with Snooki.

Doonan believes this practice is “brilliant” and that “it makes total sense.” However, like any PR strategy, it’s not perfect. First, companies might face the same difficulty getting Snooki to take the bag out in public for the cameras as they do with getting any other celebrity to wear their stuff. She probably — and this is depressing — gets so much stuff that she can’t possibly wear it all. She probably also would easily confuse it with any knockoffs she accrued in her life before the fame. And besides, do brands really need to send anyone from Jersey Shore designer stuff to get them to make a label look bad? Look at what Sammi did for Chanel after decking herself out in painful knockoffs constantly in season one. These people don’t need help to be destructive.